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The Warriors have lost three straight games since their stunning win in Houston. They’ve slipped under .500 for the first time since Dec. 20. They’ve fallen behind the Clippers into ninth place in the Western Conference.
And they just endured the back-to-back from hell.
A night after losing to the tanking Jazz in Utah, the Warriors (32-33) came home to squander a game against the Bulls. Chicago and Utah’s combined winning percentage is .356.
Golden State’s loss at Salt Lake City came as Jazz coach Will Hardy sat his best player, Keyonte George, for the final 15 minutes. In their overtime defeat against Chicago, the Warriors let Matas Buzelis go off for a career-high 41 points and blew an eight-point lead in the final 90 seconds of regulation.
“Both very winnable games,” head coach Steve Kerr said after the 130-124 loss to Chicago. “Had the lead late tonight, obviously one we should’ve had. This is how the NBA is. Especially when you’re beaten up. You’re not going to blow anybody out. Games are going to be tight. You’ve got to finish. We didn’t finish either of the last two nights.”
Unlike the bottom third of the league, the Warriors are not tanking. They are trying to win every night. They just don’t have the horses for any game, against any opponent, to walk into an arena with justified confidence.
Steph Curry has been sidelined since Jan. 30 with runner’s knee, and an update is coming Wednesday. Jimmy Butler’s season ended on Jan. 4 when he tore his ACL. Al Horford doesn’t play both ends of back-to-backs. Neither does Kristaps Porzingis or De’Anthony Melton. Golden State is playing all three of its two-way players by necessity, plus two more who are what MLB evaluators would consider Quad-A players.
The circumstances have created a reality that any game is about as winnable as it is losable. Since Curry went down, the Warriors are 5-10 with wins over the Rockets and Nuggets, but losses to the Pelicans, Jazz, and Bulls.
Again, and it’d be tough to emphasize this enough, the Warriors are not tanking. Their goal has shifted from escaping the play-in round to climbing up to the seventh or eighth seed. They’re confident Curry will return, and want to give him a shot at postseason action.
“Of course, when you can get two stabs at it if you need to, it’d be great,” Gary Payton II said. “But to put ourselves in this position — like I said, we’ve just got to finish strong. Try to fight our way back to the eight or seven.”
But if the Warriors remain in the ninth seed, they’d be one loss away from the lottery. And not only that, there could be lottery teams with better records — and therefore worse lottery odds — than Golden State.
If the season ended today, the Warriors would have the 12th worst record in the NBA. A play-in elimination could give them a 7.1% chance at a top-four pick in a loaded draft class.
Source: Tankathon.com
For a third time: the Warriors are NOT tanking. Their clear preference would be to advance through the play-in. But it is a fact that they could fall into the lottery, so that hypothetical is at least worth pondering.
Games like Tuesday’s make the hypothetical more plausible.
Today
4 days ago
Tuesday, Mar. 3
The Bulls went winless in February and arrived at Chase Center coming off a loss to the lowly Kings. Horford and Draymond Green each committed head-scratching shooting fouls in the final 90 seconds of regulation, and the Warriors got too 3-happy in overtime.
LJ Cryer, a two-way guard in his fourth day cleared for 5-on-5 activity after his hamstring strain, scored 17 points in 21 minutes off the bench. It was a valiant effort. Nate Williams (11 minutes) and Malevy Leons (two minutes) also played, marking the third straight game all two-way players touched the court.
Pat Spencer (17 points in 30 minutes) had his best game in weeks. Quinten Post was a DNP and has been in and out of Kerr’s rotation. They were two-way players as recently as this past winter and last February.
Melton was supposed to complete his first back-to-back of the season, but he was scratched pregame with lower body tightness. Moses Moody (wrist sprain) missed his fourth straight game, thinning the Warriors’ wing options to throw at Buzelis.
Porzingis played his third game as a Warrior, though even he admitted his stamina still isn’t where it needs to be. On one play, he had what should’ve been a breakaway dunk, but the Bulls caught up to him from behind and he turned it over trying to draw a foul.
So many injuries forced the 39-year-old Horford to log a team-high 34 minutes. Gui Santos, who has developed into a reliable role player, has played 41, 37, 33, and 36 minutes in the past week.
Chicago outscored the Warriors 12-6 in the five-minute overtime period. Golden State looked gassed and took just two of 11 field goal attempts from inside the 3-point arc.
“We’re at the point in the season where we’re fighting just to stay alive right now,” Spencer said. “The goal is to get into that seven-eight game. I don’t think we’re going to put too much stress on each individual game. But we know how important every game is now down the stretch. Hopefully get 30 healthy here, but ultimately, these are games we need to win if we want to put ourselves in position to go after a playoff run.”
The Warriors aren’t tanking. Promise. But catch them on the wrong night, like the past two, and they don’t need to.